Just what a scientifically illiterate country needs

Twenty-seven percent.

That is the number of adults in the United States who think the sun circles the earth. Forty-nine percent don’t know that electrons are smaller than atoms. More than half think lasers are focused sound waves.* To see the survey for yourself, click here.

The Toys“R”Us spot above doesn’t promise to help much. Sure, it’s just a spot, not meant to be taken seriously. But must science and nature be boring for toys to be fun? Isn’t there room in a child’s life for play and wonder? I suggest that we have a moral imperative to ensure there is.

There is a disturbing, growing anti-science sentiment in the U.S. Odd for a society that thrives on smartphones, flies at 30,000 feet, drives at 80 mph, streams video, and inhabits climate-controlled buildings—all things we have thanks to science. You know, the stuff that this Toys“R”Us spot is telling parents not to bore their kids with._____________________*If you said, “What? Huh? That’s not right?” to any of these or other items in the survey, thank you for illustrating my point.